Christian Theology and the Nature of Attachment: A Panel on Gregory Fricchione's Compassion and Healing in Medicine and Society: On the Nature and Use of Attachment Solutions to Separation Challenges

Philip Lorish, PhD(c), University of Virginia Warren Kinghorn, MD, ThD, Duke University Gregory Fricchione, MD, Harvard Medical SchoolModerator: Justin B. Smith, MD, University of VirginiaThis panel introduces and examines the achievements of Gregory Fricchione’s recently published Compassion and Healing in Medicine and Society: On the Nature and Use of Attachment Solutions to Separation Challenges. In this important and expansive work, Fricchione poses a profound but often-neglected question: how, ethically speaking, can medical professionals genuinely come alongside patients amidst their “deep dialogue concerning the ultimate transitions between attachment and separation”? Fricchione argues that the good physician – and, in his case, the good psychiatrist – is “transitionally related” to his or her patient amidst the irreducibly human negotiation of attachment and separation. Interestingly, though the theological underpinnings of such a claim are largely unstated, Fricchone argues on evolutionary grounds that “something akin to a natural law” has emerged “from the relationship between separation challenges and the application of attachment solutions.” It is in this way that the phenomena of compassion and altruism can be possible in our world.

The panel will begin with a ten-minute introduction to the book from the moderator, one of Fricchione’s recent fellows. This is intended to convey the argument of the book to the conference audience. Two critical presentations of no more than 15 minutes will follow. The first will concentrate on the social meaning of medicine present in Fricchione’s work while the second will query the theological points of interest implicit in Fricchione’s theoretical framework. Schedule permitting, after these two presentations Dr. Fricchione will be present to respond briefly before opening up the discussion to conference attendees. The panel should be of interest for conference participants concerned with the nature of medicine, the cultivation of the virtues required for patient care, the nature of attachment and separation, and the relation of theological traditions to human evolution.